Pair of concerts at Highline CC

Highline Community College’s own music students and music instructors from HCC and other schools will perform in separate concerts this week at the college.

The Scholarship Winners’ Recital, featuring five of Highline’s top music students –– two of them from Federal Way –– is scheduled for 7 p.m. tomorrow. Admission is free.

The instructors will take the stage Sunday at 4 p.m.

Both concerts will be staged in the Arts-Lecture Center Building 7) on the main campus in Des Moines.

The student recital will showcase solo vocalists and instrumentalists performing classical and jazz pieces, among others. The performers, three of them Ukraine immigrants, include:

• Pianist Viktoriya Udut, a Kent resident, was born in the Ukraine and began music studies at the age of 6. She trained at the famed Ukraine Music Institute before immigrating to the United States in 2000. After graduation from college, she plans to teach and produce a women’s Christian vocal group.

• Vocalist Candice Williams of Seattle. She has studied at Highline for the past two years. and participated in this year’s National Association of Teachers and Students College I competition. She is pursuing a career as a singer/songwriter.

• Pianist Valèry Petrovich Dzyubak of Federal Way. He was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the U.S. when he was 6. Dzyubak inherited his interest in music from his mother, a graduate of the Kiev Conservatory of Music. He plans to continue his studies at a music conservatory in New York.

• Vocalist Faina Morozov, a Federal Way resident who received Highline’s Scholastic Award for Outstanding Vocal Performance in 2003. In February, she placed first in the National Association of Teachers and Students College I competition. Morozov is originally from Ukraine.

• Saxophonist JC Hedberg of SeaTac, winner of several awards since coming to Highline as a Running Start student in 2000. She has organized and led the newly formed Highline Jazz Ensemble. A native of Washington and a graduate of Tyee High School, she received the Outstanding Soloist award at the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival. She wants to pursue a jazz studies/performance degree at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts.

Vocal music instructors who will perform Sunday include Laird Thornton, choral conductor from Thomas Jefferson High School; Thomas Almli of Bellevue Community College; and Sandra Glover of Highline.

They’ll do solos, duet and trio literature. They will be accompanied by Karen Kuenzi of Steilacoom, who has appeared on stages throughout the western U.S. and Canada.

Admission to the instructors’ concert is free, but donations will be accepted to benefit the music scholarship programs of the teachers’ schools.

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